Vrai had never shared his bed. Which made the sudden maw of emptiness he felt laying in it all the more strange. Not lonesome. He could feel Eulalie and her Right on the edges of his psyche. There should he need them.

At least he liked to believe so. Despite some evidence to the contrary. It wasn’t fair, he knew while staring up at his ceiling. Doubting them for failing what should never have been a test. He rubbed a smooth palm over his bare chest and tried to fall asleep.

But it was there again. A strange sensation that something was missing. Or not right. Settled against his spine when he turned to lay on his side. Small bed suddenly too large.

He left it. Shirt shrugged over his long arms so he wasn’t overly exposed should he meet another midnight lurker in the halls. Under his naked feet the stone was smooth and cool. Toes dipping into the shallow creases where one tile met another. At the armory he left a handprint on the door. ’Just me,’ it promised, should his Lady wake to find her space invaded.

That room was no relief for the gaping nothing that filled him up, though. Through it’s center and into its heart he sought the peace of Eulalie’s inner sanctum. Tall arches overhead to make him feel sheltered. Another handprint on the stonework. No hidden message or emotion stored. Just proof that it was Vrai.

Still just Vrai. No matter what had changed and not changed in the weeks between before and after. He sighed in the center of that place where they so often went to meditate together. An act deeper than their morning prayers and richer than weekly services. He liked the stain of comfort that crept out of this place.

It made him feel less a jumble of things that were and shouldn’t be. Helped him forget the crease he sometimes caught in the corner of Eulalie’s eye. Glances of unspoken question when she thought he wasn’t looking. So he sat there, long body stretched out so he could stare up at the patchwork stars overhead. One arm pillowing his head. Loose hair a black halo around his head. The tender patch darkening again as new hairs replaced what had been torn out.

He felt her before she came into the courtyard. Enough time to compose his face into a smile for her benefit. "They call this the Witching hour you know. Say its the time when the Darkness is at its deepest, and Mother Night her closest to our mortal souls." Could Eulalie feel Her? Surely that Black was deep enough to feel the ripples of eternity radiating from their creator.

Eulalie rolled away from Kadriye, stretching out on her back, dark hair not her own pulled from her lips. The ceiling was a shadow above her, not that Eulalie was really looking at, for all she stared. She could feel the deep quiet of her Right, psyche lost to dreams she couldn’t guess at without prying.

It was Vrai who woke her. Vrai who so often interrupted her rest. Never in person, never so crass as to intrude on her person. But he could not help her thoughts, and it seemed neither could she. Rolling farther from her new companion, Eulalie let her feet slip to the ground, hair brushed by her fingers as she sought him out. The restlessness that had drawn her from sleep slackening.

Drawing a robe around her body, Eulalie set off after him. Hand prints guiding her as she went. Her own fingers shorter than those left behind, palm fitting into the warmth. Her armory was empty however. Every lash and shackle in place. Her office too was bare of any presence. Paperwork waiting for morning. Chairs set out for appointments. Touching the back of her own, Eulalie turned to the window and smiled.

The night air was warm, but almost dry. Pleasant and quiet and soft. He was stretched across her place. Their place. His body nearly filled it all, so long laid out like that. His hair spilling across the grass, forcing Eulalie to tread carefully around him. At his side she knelt, the motion singular and fluid. A dozen times a day she knelt in commune. Not always here, though this was where she reached deepest. Here, and not in the temple, surprisingly.

”I do not think she ever travels far from there. Perhaps we can simply better glimpse her when blind.” Legs curled beneath her, Eulalie leaned at his side, but not into it. Night extending out around them. The Darkness beneath them. Peaceful, except he was not at peace. ”Is that what brought you out tonight?” She asked, fingertips touching the ends of his hair. ”Witching hour. Darkness Blessed indeed.” Had Witch died or been born at such an hour?

Like a flower to the sun Vrai turned his face to Eulalie. Looking more content than he felt. The hand resting on his chest twitching. He wanted to reach out, he always wanted to reach out. Help her sit. Help her stand. Hold her hand. Fix her hair. All the time. Even after all this time.

She knelt without his hand, as she always did. Sometimes her Right offered his instead. Vrai appreciated it. As if in touching one she touched both. They were as close as brothers, so perhaps it was so. ”I was just thinking, perhaps those awake at such an hour are those that need to feel her most. And therefore inclined to be open to such a miracle.”

An inch between them. Turning back up to the stars he ignored the space. Trying to pinpoint an answer to the gentle question she asked. He had none. Not sure what drove him from his bed. Or too afraid to dwell on it. ”If I knew I would tell you. I just couldn’t sleep.” His voice dropped to a whisper. Lips wet while he turned the question around, ”What of my Lady? Avoiding sleep, or sleep avoiding you?”

There must have been a thousand things on her mind. Usually Vrai could guess. Knew most of them because he was privy to such things. And he knew of the official business. The worries of Mother Priestess. The concerns of Lady Reneux. But Eulalie’s mind… he had lost the right to be sure of what went on there. Had become a worry instead of the shoulder she laid them on.

That weighed on his soul more than the actual act. He should be trying harder to bridge her doubts. He was afraid, though, so afraid. What if, in discussing what had passed, she found she couldn’t love him anymore? It had been such a dark and ugly thing. Flinching away from his own fingernails he sighed softly. Ignorant to the fingers spread on the fanned ends of his hair he studied her face. Eyes so dark the stars could have come from their depths. A beauty even a eunuch couldn’t help admire. ”You don’t have to stay up, Eulie. I’m alright on my own.” She didn’t have to take on his care. And he hated to think she might sacrifice her own needs to do it. ”You should be resting.”

Eulalie studied him. Fingers weaving his hair through grass as Vrai studied the stars. She needed no light to see his face. No sight either. If she closed her eyes she could recall his face in perfect detail. She knew nearly every expression. The way they creased his face, what they meant when he wore them. But she looked even though she did not need to. Watched starlight move across his skin.

”You may be right. The distractions of the day gone, a mind could find the peace it needs to see deeper. Find answers to questions that won’t come during the day.” Was that why he was awake? Did he need a miracle? Vrai had no answer for her question, turning it back on Eulalie instead. Like him she was not exactly sure why she’d woke. Maybe his restlessness had drawn her from sleep, or some other worry plucking at his mind.

”Ills dreams, maybe. I am awake now, just as you are. Perhaps we both needed to be close to Mother Night.” Here at the center of her courtyard. Stone pillars and garden around them. Her shoulders rose and fell. It was peaceful here. The Abyss whispering beneath them. Its fierce heart at the center of Voulan. ”It is not often I find you out of your room at night.” A disturbance in the routine. But all that was normal had been sundered some weeks ago, hadn’t it?

”Vrai.” She chided. ”Are we not friends? Sitting with you is restful. And more helpful than laying in bed on my own.” She had not been alone, but it was not the same. She never grew attached to the women who kept her bed from being cold or lonely. They had one purpose, to stem the tide of loneliness that came at night. To offer the physical comfort of a body to curl against.

Vrai’s company spoke to a place deeper, and more sacred than her flesh.

”Scoot.” She told him, turning beside him and laying back. Not so long as him, Eulalie stretched out at his side. Turning her face up to the stars with him. The arches made a frame of the night sky. Funneled the breeze over and around their bodies. Eulalie breathed deeply, stomach swelling. She had never laid here. Always she sat, sinking deep into Darkness. ”This is nice.” He was warm, beside her. So close she could feel him even though they did not touch.

”And sometimes it’s just easier to face the answers you fear when its dark.” Vrai added. Careful to make the thought sound absent and not wistful. He had decided it was not his place or his right to dwell in self pity. Or self flagellation. It helped no one, it made him look guilt when Eulie needed him to be innocent, and disturbed all three of them when he was anything less than serene.

Turning from the stars to his lady Vrai’s eyebrows lifted in concern. ”Ill dreams?” Was she having nightmares? Were the about him? Sometimes Vrai did. Even when he was awake. He would pass a mirror and see a different self. A dark, stalking, predatory Vra glimpsed from in peripheral vision of a fevered mind as he crossed a small washroom.

”It is not often I wander from it.” He promised her, lips twitching towards a smile. ”Do you wander the temple alone at night?” Eulalie was safe. There was no soul alive that could bring her bodily harm. Not in the world, least of all in the temple. But he worried about the parts of her that were more easily hurt. Heart and spirit. Was she roaming the halls while her Hands slept?

Smirking at her tone he noted, finally, the soft shifting of his hair. He didn’t look, because then she would stop. It was the only part of him she touched, and rarely done. He carried on the conversation instead. Hoping to keep her hands and mind distracted from one another. ”Restlessness is to blame, I suppose... My bed felt,” His brow lowered, head shaking slightly as he strained for the right word. Settling, with a sigh, on one that didn’t seem to encompass the feeling he wanted to describe, ”strange, empty- or something of the sort. Just wrong with me in it. I wanted to be someplace where everything felt right.”

Now Eulie was with him and it was perfect. And growing better every second. Chest frozen, heart and breath both, Vrai shifted to the side. All the small hairs on his body warm with her body so close to his own. On the bone between his breasts he drummed his fingers. Elbow carefully angled so that he didn’t touch his Lady on accident. ”It’s very nice.” He agreed. Hair pulled as it caught under his head while he turned to get her face into view.

”I can see them reflecting in your eyes. All the little stars.” She was so beautiful. It made his soul ache and his heart drum too fast. The rest of his body was quiet. And the ache was a good ache. ”You look thoughtful, Eulie. What are you thinking about, hm?”

They were alone. Really alone. Right sleeping off their busy day. Maybe he could rest enough for all three of them. All the temple was gentle and silent. Those that worked in the hours between then and dawn were deep in the heart of the servants areas. There was no chance a stray apprentice or bustling maid would walk by. ”It’s just you and me. We can talk about anything. Everything. Because tomorrow we can pretend the whole thing was just a dream.”

”Strange, isn’t it, since most begin their lives afraid of it?” Even Eulalie had feared the dark as a child. Her mother’s whispered assurances that she was from the Darkness did not help. She would lay awake in her bed waiting for it to reclaim her. Now night and day were the same for Eulalie. She feared neither because she expected treachery from both. But even she had truths she did not like facing. She supposed Vrai did too, now.

”Mayhap. I don’t remember what woke me.” Her fingers smoothed his hair, as if they would soothe away his concern that way. Perhaps it was his wandering. Another change in the routine, a disturbance she was not used to creeping through her psyche. Eulalie hoped she had simply known, even sleeping, that he might have need of a friend. She laughed softly, wishing she could stroke the worry from his face.

”No. Have no fear, my Hand, I do not go wandering about at night.” Free to go where she liked, Eulalie did not need to creep about in the dark like an errant child. ”Like a good girl, I stay tucked in my bed where you put me.” She teased him. If she needed more than what occupied her room, Eulalie could simply summon it. Either for herself, or through her eunuchs. Usually Vrai. He truly was like a hand, so much a part of her her life would never be the same if they were severed.

Eulalie’s head turned subtly to him as she listened. She did not look at him directly, but carefully from the corners of her eyes. Afraid that such blatant observation would bring his halting explanation to a stop.

”Empty.” His bed usually was, except for him. Always was, as far as Eulalie knew. She did not often enter his private room, but she had never sensed another when she bad. ”Perhaps it was loneliness then, since your bed is always empty except your too long body.” He had been a little more distant since the accident. Reserved as they all played their parts in his innocence. It must have been lonely. Eulalie was often lonely as well, even with a warm body tucked against hers.

Here together, they could both be less lonely. Laying out under the stars, side by side. The grass prickled her skin where it was exposed. Eulalie smoothed the folds of her robe, making sure every creased was a closed one. She looked at the sky, falling up away from them, and felt almost as if the world tilted and they would slip down into it. Could hear everything, as if amplified by the ground. She turned to her to face him, cheek brushing his hair.

She had lain on it.

”Can you?” His were too light for starshine, but Eulalie fancied she could see herself wavering in his pupils. But she did not want to look at herself, vision expanding until she saw Vrai. Tucking her robe between her thighs, Eulalie rolled until she faced him. Elbow sliding up until her cheek was propped on her hand. Her other carefully moving his hair so she did not pull it.

”I was think about you, and falling into the sky.” The Darkness. It gave her many memories spun from starlight. Eulalie had stopped being afraid of the dark after meeting Vrai. Comfort. Isidore’s startled expression at his Offering. Vrai buried in her apprentice. Herself buried against Isidore. Neither had brought relief to anyone. ”You’ve been quiet, and I worry what happened weighs on you when it should not.” It weighed in her.

Inches like miles between them. More pronounced now that Eulalie knew there were things he craved outside of her. Or that he could or would not seek with her. Before it had been Eulalie and Vrai, her second making them stronger but not complete. They’d been that before. And now Georgette sat in the center, disturbing the balance.

She wished it could be a dream. For Vrai’s conscience and selfishness.

She laughed; from Eulie it was never a boisterous sound. Always controlled to a degree. Or simply soft because that was her way. Even so, it was the prettiest sound Vrai could think of. This time she was laughing at Vrai, but he didn’t mind. It was not unkind. Just her pleasure at being worried over. ”Except for tonight.” He answered with a meek grin of his own. Not sure why it did strange things to the beat of his heart for her to say he put her to bed. It was silliness. Most nights. He had very rarely been the one to tuck her beneath her blankets.

”Just remember if the urge does strike, I’m always ready to follow. And never too tired to keep you company at any hour.” Everyone needed a bit of time to themselves, he could accept that. But he didn’t like the idea of Eulalie alone when she didn’t have to be. Especially not at night when shadows were longer and darker.

When they could chase you from bed and leave you seeking starlight to keep them away.

That was one of the reasons they were three. Always a friend ready, always someone to balance the others. Still, it somehow felt wrong to be the one in need. It wasn’t the role Vrai was accustomed to filling.

”Too long? By whose measure?” Vrai smiled, a flash of pale teeth in the starlight. The corners of his eyes creasing in amusement as he looked sideways at his Lady. ”Loneliness. If it was, I’ve you here now.” Eulalie was his anchor. A tether of surety when he was being forced to question his identity. Mother Night he loved her so much it was terrifying. For Eulie there was nothing he would hesitate to do or sacrifice.

On his neck and cheek he could feel the warmth of her breath. Scalp tingling at the tension her shifting put on his hair. Not pulling, but there. Pleasantly there. He nodded his head, turning because she turned. Nothing delicate to hide with his own clothes. Shirt open and soft cotton pants held tight by their drawstring. Face so close together he could steal a kiss before she’d realize what had passed.

But he didn’t. Vrai had taken enough of what he didn’t deserve. And he’d clouded his lady’s mind far too much of late. ”Wouldn’t that be something? If we could dive in like children on a pier.” What would the stars really be if they could hold them in their hands? Collect them seashells. Rearrange them until the universe spelled out her name.

”Ah.” There it was. Worrying about him. Vrai’s fingers twitched against the grass. ”I’m sorry you’re carrying that in your mind. You shouldn’t have to. I don’t mean to be quiet. There’s just a lot in my head these days. You know? Everything has changed but nothing is different.” He bit off his words before his voice could waver.

Vrai had thought a lot in the past on the subject of his personhood. Was he a man? Or did being a eunuch negate those things? Why did they say it made him more if it took away that core piece of ones identity? The answer had never been made clear. Instead more questions replaced it. Man or not, what sort of person was he? Had he preyed on Georgi, or was it all one unfair coincidence? How much had been the drug, and how much Vrai?

The only thing he was sure of, was that he did deserve to feel guilty. Not all the time, and not in that overwhelming way that had defined the first few weeks after. Vrai belonged to Eulie, and with Eulie. She would keep him from doing anything like that again. And he was her Left Hand. He couldn’t perform those duties, sacred or personal, if he let grief consume his mind.

Nonetheless he would carry the sound of Georgi screaming in his heart forever. That much he owed her. To lose sleep and stare at the stranger in the mirror from time to time. ”The same thing worries me too. does what happened weigh on you when it should not?”

”Except for tonight.” She agreed quietly. A breeze tickled her bare feet, and the nape of her neck. Teased her air and shifted the grass. It was soft, like a sigh, warm a mildly damp as it kissed the skin. Soon the rains would pass and the air would be hot. Hot and so wet everything stuck together. Tempers always rose in the summer, so the raiders would be sent away more often to cool their heads in better climates.

And take some of that heat induced rage out on others more deserving of it.

”As you always have been. How could I ever forget it?” Even when she had been a girl, Vrai had been there. Waking with Eulie in the night to sneak about. Or slinking off with her during the day, in the short gaps between lessons so she could tumble that boy again. The one who had seen her through her virgins night. Vrai waiting patiently outside the door while she broke rank and file. Never scolding, though always advising.

”Everyones, you great big bamboo shoot.” She laughed at him again, watching his smile change the planes of his face. This expression familiar too. Beautiful creature that he was, Eulalie could have looked forever. ”And always, even if I am not directly at hand. You can come to me too, you know.” She reminded him, yet again. He was so secretive with his feelings! Keeping all his pain inside until it spilled out in places it should not have.

Eulalie did not want to share even that part of him with anyone else.

”It would be. I doubt it has a bottom we could ever reach.” Somewhere on the other side of their sky was another realm. Its horizons brighter than their own. Twilight always tinging even Paon’s blinding sun. Fitting, really, with the shadow recently cast over her temple. Or maybe that was the same one that had haunted Eulalie’s whole life. Expectations she had failed time and again. Never quite achieving all that potential her mother had obsessed about.

”Do not be sorry. Did we not just discuss this?” Eulalie frowned at him in gentle reprimand. ”It is nature to worry over those we care about.” She touched him with a careful tendril of power. Red as her blood and birthright. To reassure him that none of the love she had felt before had been diminished in any way. ”I know.” She promised, having felt the same. Everything was exactly the same, and yet crumbling to dust.

”Mayhap.” All things concerning Vrai concerned Eulalie. These days her second was their buoy. Holding them aloft. ”I don’t know, Vrai. I worry about you than what happened. Or that it happened at all. And probably less than things I should worry over.” Tucked face to face. As close as lovers without a sliver of skin touching. Just their hair in a tangled bed around them.

”Maybe we need to get away for a while. Away from here where everything presses.” She suggested, emboldened by the silent night. ”I want to see the Keep, and I am sure I can convince Isidore to take us.” Or bribe him to.

There was nothing more beautiful than Eulalie’s laugh. Transfixed by its melody Vrai lay there staring. Lips parted as if he would keep laugh too, but the sound was stuck in his lungs. Even if every star in the blanket of black sky over them had a hundred planets he was sure there wasn’t a lovelier sight in the universe. It was the way her mouth curved up when she was really amused. The flutter of her eyelashes. That soft sigh when she caught her breath. All the worries and primness of Mother Priestess laid aside for a rare second. Burdens forgotten as she called him playful names. It frightened him, the feeling of reckless devotion she inspired in his soul.

The promises were well intended and appreciated so he smiled more. But Vrai knew better. ”I promise to try.” He compromised instead of arguing. Including Eulie in his petty woes seemed selfish when she had three islands to think of. And when he had needed her most, he had tried to get to her. He remembered that much at least. More and more every day. Memories that surfaced and twisted his stomach all over again.

”Nor would I hope to. The unknown is ripe with possibility. Reaching a bottom would ruin the wonder.” It would end the hope that somewhere a boy loved a girl that loved him back and there were no ifs, and or buts involved. A place where love was more than enough for absolute happiness.

Rolling fully to his side he stretched an arm out over her head. So close. So far. ”I have to be sorry.” He told her quietly. Voice and eyes both shifting towards the sky again. ”I love you too much not to regret making you worry. Or making you doubt me in any way.” Would she ever fully trust him again? That hurt Vrai deeper than facing the terrible truth of what he was capable of. But it was hard to be too sorry when she extended that gentle thread of power to him. Vrai trusted her implicitly. Unflinching as a well of power double the double of his own brushed his conscious. It was more than he deserved.

A comfort he had not had to ask for, made all the sweeter for being so purely offered. At least he wasn’t alone. Eulie saw the invisible differences too. Felt them. Did they crawl in her heart and make her skin itch too? Vrai couldn’t ask. He was too worried about the answer.

”I shouldn't be glad. I know it's wrong. But it always makes me happy to hear you thinking of me.” His fingers twitched again. Wishing he could stroke the line of concern from her brow. He blinked over at her and tried to think of something to say. Something that would help. ”You’re a good priestess, and a good leader. You wouldn’t let our friendship negatively affect Paon. I know you’ll never be able to trust me the same way again. I understand. Just forgive me, that’s all I need in this life.” As long as Eulie could still love him, and he could stay in service to her, the rest didn’t matter.

He didn’t know if or how to fix what he had broken. Some of it could never be repaired, like poor innocent Georgie. But it seemed his lady had a radical idea. Eyes growing wide he looked around in surprise for a moment. Hand tangling in their pooled hair and head shaking, then slowly nodding. ”If you want to see the Keep, then you will see it. We’ll find a way, with or without Isidore.” There was no way he would let her go without him. Especially not with Isidore.

And he could barely keep his heart from buzzing with exciting possibility of seeing the library there. Archives of ancient records… So many questions the books on Paon couldn’t answer! ”How long is a while? Days or?” He couldn’t finish the questions. Surely not weeks. Hours maybe. Women and eunuchs never left the islands. It made his stomach tight and his nerve endings tingle. He couldn’t help smiling again, ”The Keep… Darkness knows it hasn’t seen a holy lady of your status in far too long.”

Welcome to Witchlight

We are an AU Black Jewels RPG that is continuously expanding the world lore to truly make it our own. Come join us and play in our sandbox!

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Witchlight is loosely based upon the Black Jewels Series by Anne Bishop though it has been adapted and expanded by our members. All lore, characters, and writing belongs to the members. Site graphics & custom codes were created by the staff. A special thanks to Wolf & Katarina for all their help with the planning of Witchlight and the writing of the base lore.